Typhoon Haiyan: Desperate survivors wait in the open for aid as rains return

Desperately needed aid fails to arrive as the victims of Haiyan face another
night without shelter

A Filipino boy holding a bottle of water walks through the super typhoon devastated city of TaclobanPhoto: EPA/FRANCIS R. MALASIG

By David Eimer, Manila

9:27PM GMT 12 Nov 2013

Hundreds of thousands of people were spending their fifth night sleeping in the open in the Philippines last night as soldiers and aid workers struggled to deliver help to the victims of Typhoon Haiyan.

Almost half of the estimated 660,000 people left homeless by its devastating wind and waves were still without shelter as tropical weather brought more heavy and forecasters warned of the risk of a second typhoon later this week.

Anger across the Philippines was continuing to rise at what seemed to be the slow response to the crisis, with many areas yet to receive aid on the scale needed.

The number killed remains unclear, with the United Nations estimating at least 10,000.

Benigno Aquino, the Philippines’ president, said yesterday that he believed that the true figure was lower – saying only between 2,000 and 2,500 had perished – but many of the worst-affected towns and islands have yet to provide reliable death tolls.

As the world scrambled to send assistance to those who survived – including Britain saying it would contribute aid up to £15 million and the Disaster Emergencies Committee raising £1.5 million on the first day of its appeal – there was still little to show for it on the ground.

Along the road running through the storm-battered far north of Cebu Island, aid workers said shivering children stood in the rain with arms outstretched begging for food and water. Some held up signs that simply said “Help Us”.

In northern Cebu, water is so scarce that people are drinking from wells contaminated by the storm surges that swept ashore and destroyed almost every building in the region. Food supplies are almost exhausted.

“We are running out of food,” said Gilberto Arrabi Jr, the vice-mayor of Daanbantayan, the small town at Cebu’s far northern tip. “We don’t have enough to last the rest of the week.”

Elsewhere in the disaster zone, the security situation in the hardest-hit areas such as Tacloban city and Guiuan in eastern Samar province is increasingly volatile.

Soldiers guard a looted shop in Tacloban

People live in fear of being robbed for what little they salvaged from their homes. What started out as widespread looting has become ever more vicious as people grow more desperate. So severe is the disorder that the authorities have imposed a nine-hour curfew in Tacloban every night and deployed commandos from the elite Special Action Force, the Philippines’ equivalent of the SAS.

There is limited capacity at Tacloban airport for the giant C130 transport planes bringing aid, and they cannot fly at night because there is no power and no lights.

Shops and homes have been ransacked and now the few relief convoys reaching the most broken cities are being targeted.

A man points at one of the bags containing bodies of typhoon victims in Tacloban city

Richard Gordon, the chairman of the Philippines Red Cross, told how a relief column heading into Samar province was forced to turn back after coming under attack, apparently by communist insurgents.

“A fire fight broke out as one of our aid convoys attempted to cross into Samar from Leyte province,” said Mr Gordon.

President Barack Obama has ordered the American aircraft carrier USS George Washington and its support ships to sail from Hong Kong to bring help. Britain is sending the destroyer HMS Daring from Singapore.

It will be several days before they arrive and it is now that help is needed.

“The people are expressing their urgent need for food, water and shelter,” said Aaron Aspi, an aid worker for World Vision charity who is in the far north of Cebu.

“There are lots of little children begging by the road. It’s raining hard and they are drenched.”

Inside the one standing school that serves as the local evacuation centre, 60 families, about 300 people, are crammed into four classrooms, sharing two barely functioning lavatories.

The prospect of disease sweeping through such a confined, packed space is now very real.

“I saw children suffering from fever,” said Mr Aspi. “Many people have colds, there is diarrhoea. Some people look really bad. I felt like I had caught something after spending time there.”

The only happy moment in the past four days was the birth of a baby girl in one of the classrooms on Sunday. “The people staying there have nicknamed her 'Yolanda’, the Filipino name for Haiyan,” said Mr Aspi. It is the sort of grim humour more usually employed by soldiers in war zones to dispel the horrors they face.

Soldiers help the frail and wounded to a waiting C130 aircraft during the evacuation of Tacloban

There is just one hospital in the district. It is packed with the wounded, people with fractured limbs or severe lacerations caused by the debris hurled through the air by winds of up to 195mph.

Tata Abella, who was making an assessment for Oxfam yesterday, said: “They have very little water and just basic medical supplies. They are so understaffed that the doctors have to walk two miles each way to carry back water from wells.”

Outside the local government office, crowds gathered pressing the mayor and his officials for shelter.

“The mayor was trying to explain that he didn’t have any more plastic sheets or tarpaulins,” said Ms Abella.

Instead, those living rough are scavenging through the remains of their homes and building makeshift shelters. “They are totally exposed to the elements, especially now that it is raining again,” Ms Abella added.

Across every region hit by Haiyan, none of the traumatised, exhausted and starving victims can understand why so little aid is reaching them.

“Everyone is saying the same thing: 'Why isn’t the government helping us?’,” said Ms Abella. “They want to know how they are going to rebuild their lives. They want to know what is going to happen to them.”

* To make a donation to the DEC Philippines Crisis Appeal visit www.dec.org.uk, or call the 24 – hour hotline on 0370 60 60 900, donate over the counter at any high street bank or post office or send a cheque. You can also donate £5 by texting the word SUPPORT to 70000.